A cunning American boy becomes a Mexican cartel soldier and East LA executioner

"None of the cars were registered in his [real] name," says Detective Gonzales. "He had no ties to anything. We talked to many of the neighbors, and they had no idea. They just knew him as Sam. There were multiple people who said, 'Nice guy, we never would have known.' "

Detectives also found a high-tech system of monitors that would later provide chilling video evidence pointing directly to Torres' friend Smiley as his killer.

Anthony Limon, the victim found shot in the back, told detectives that he'd agreed as a favor to limo-service owner "Sam" to ferry around four guys in his Hummer limo that night, picking up the first three and taking them to a spot in the Long Beach area — the upscale Elephant Bar Restaurant in suburban Lakewood — where they picked up Smiley. Then it was on to El Parral Club in working-class South Gate, then several hours cruising in Hollywood, then back to Lakewood.

But one of the guys, who police later determined was Saenz, was restless. He ordered Limon to drive to Montebello, then at 5 a.m. ordered him to drive to the limo owner's home in Whittier.

Later, at a dramatic meeting between Traci Gonzales and FBI special agent Garriola, she showed him the video retrieved from that night. Like a scene out of The Ring, the video flickers with shadowy, ethereal black-and-white images of Saenz smiling and rubbing his hands together gleefully while knocking repeatedly on Torres' door. At one point, Saenz reaches into his pants pocket to check on something.

Torres is seen opening the door in his underwear, and the men barge in. Limon told police that inside, Smiley pulled a gun on Torres, so Limon jumped in front of Torres and pleaded with Smiley to calm down. Instead, Limon was hit on the head, and as he fell he heard one of the men he'd driven around all night bark out: "Dome him!" — street lingo for a bullet to the head. Before the shot slammed into his back, he recalled to cops, Limon heard someone giggle.

It was all about that vast amount of cash sitting back in Missouri, confiscated three months earlier by the St. Charles County cops who had pulled Torres over. "There was some money owed and a timetable," Garriola says. "Oscar didn't meet it."

Gonzales says Torres already had been forced, either by the local Mexican Mafia or the cartels in Mexico, to prove that the money had really been confiscated by the St. Charles deputies. "We heard through informants he took the letter [a receipt provided by the Missouri cops] and showed it to his people," she says.

A month after Torres' murder, Smiley's cousin Johnny Prado, who clearly can be seen in the video, was arrested for murder and attempted murder, and last November he went to prison for 26 years. His friends told police that he was an industrious construction worker, but Chavarria says Prado couldn't get away from the East LA gangs. "When they get older, they still have an allegiance," he says. "If they are called upon, they have to step up."

Smiley is still out there, crossing back and forth between Mexico and California, cashing in and spreading mayhem. "It is like chasing a ghost," Chavarria notes.

Bogart Bello's gravesite at the Calvary Mortuary in East Los Angeles is on a hill that overlooks the Guadalupe Church on Third Street and the gang territory where he grew up with his childhood friends Torres and Ontiveros. His tombstone reads: "Forever Living On The Top," an homage to his Lott gang. Most of those buried nearby are long dead, and visitors are few. But Efrain Bello tends his brother's site religiously.

"The police don't care," says Bello of his brother Bogart's death. "It's like another drug dealer dead. I don't think my life can continue until there is justice for my brother. To me, it was the worst thing that could ever happen."

Efrain says Bogart Bello and Rolo Ontiveros became big-time dealers because they and their families "were dirt-poor." He admits that Bello earned his first $1 million by age 19, and by 2008 was reaping $25,000 monthly thanks to cocaine funneled from Mexico. Among his best coke customers were downtown LA's lawyer population.

But, he says, his brother tried to go into a legit business by founding Lott Records and producing a number of rap songs, whose lyrics were often about the Lott gang.

In 2008, Bello was found dead in the backseat of his Audi Q7 on Chamberlain Street in Mission Hills, a stone's throw from the Ronald Reagan Freeway. After police turned up few clues, a detective hired by Efrain discovered that Bello and Smiley had just been involved in a drug deal in which Smiley disliked the quality of the coke and "took it as a great disrespect."

Chavarria and Gonzales believe Smiley kidnapped and probably killed Bello, but LAPD Foothills Division homicide supervisor Jim Freund says, "We can't prove that he was kidnapped. That came from the brother . . . Obviously someone dropped him off in the position" in which he was found, lying in his backseat with a bag pulled over his head.